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August 29, 2025

Can vitamin D supplements really slow ageing, as a recent study suggests?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dervla Kelly, Associate Professor, Pharmacology, University of Limerick

Vitamin D supplements could help protect the caps on our chromosomes that slow ageing, sparking hopes the sunshine vitamin might keep us healthier for longer, a recent study suggests.

The researchers discovered that taking 2,000 IU (international units, a standard measure for vitamins) of vitamin D daily helped maintain telomeres – the tiny structures that act like plastic caps on shoelaces, protecting our DNA from damage every time cells divide.

Telomeres sit at the end of each of our 46 chromosomes, shortening every time a cell copies itself. When they become too short, cells can no longer divide and eventually die.

Scientists have linked shorter telomeres to some of our most feared diseases of ageing, including cancer, heart disease and osteoarthritis. Smoking, chronic stress and depression all appear to speed up telomere shortening, while inflammatory processes in the body also take their toll.

Beyond strong bones

It is well known that vitamin D is essential for bone health, helping our bodies absorb calcium. Children, teenagers and people with darker skin or limited sun exposure particularly need adequate levels to build and maintain strong bones.

But vitamin D also powers our immune system. A review of evidence found that vitamin D supplements can cut respiratory infections, especially in people who are deficient.

Early research even suggests it might help prevent autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and multiple sclerosis, though more trials are needed.

Since inflammation damages telomeres, vitamin D’s anti-inflammatory effects could explain its protective role.

In this recent study, from Augusta University in the US, the researchers followed 1,031 people with an average age of 65 for five years, measuring their telomeres at the start, after two years, and after four years. Half took 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily, while the other half received a placebo.

The results showed that telomeres were preserved by 140 base pairs in the vitamin D group, compared with a placebo. To put this in context, previous research found that telomeres naturally shorten by about 460 base pairs over a decade, suggesting vitamin D’s protective effect could be genuinely meaningful.

This isn’t the first promising finding. Earlier studies have reported similar benefits, while the Mediterranean diet – rich in anti-inflammatory nutrients – has also been linked to longer telomeres.

Telomeres explained.

The catch

But there are some important points to note. Some researchers warn that extremely long telomeres might actually increase disease risk, suggesting there’s a sweet spot we don’t yet understand.

There’s also no agreement on the right dose. The Augusta researchers used 2,000 IU daily – much higher than the current recommended intake of 600 IU for under-70s and 800 IU for older adults. Yet other research suggests just 400 IU might help prevent colds.

Experts say the optimal dose probably depends on individual factors, including existing vitamin D levels, overall nutrition and how the vitamin interacts with other nutrients.

Although these findings are exciting, it’s too early to start popping high-dose vitamin D in the hope of slowing ageing. The strongest evidence for healthy ageing still points to the basics: a balanced diet, regular exercise, quality sleep, not smoking and managing stress, all of which naturally support telomere health.

However, if you’re deficient in vitamin D or at risk of poor bone health, supplements remain a sensible choice backed by decades of research. As scientists continue unravelling the mysteries of ageing, vitamin D’s role in keeping our cellular clocks ticking may prove to be just one piece of a much larger puzzle.

Dervla Kelly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Can vitamin D supplements really slow ageing, as a recent study suggests? – https://theconversation.com/can-vitamin-d-supplements-really-slow-ageing-as-a-recent-study-suggests-263680

August 29, 2025

Senegal’s rating downgrade: credit agencies are punishing countries that don’t check their numbers

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Daniel Cash, Reader in Law, Aston University

Senegal’s dramatic two-notch credit rating downgrade in February 2025 by the credit rating agency Moody’s was followed by a Standard & Poor’s downgrade in July.

Moody’s decision marked a three-notch deterioration in Senegal’s rating in four months. The scale of the revisions was rare, especially for countries not already in default or active restructuring.

The ratings collapse triggered a selloff in Senegal’s Eurobonds. It also cast a shadow over the country’s ongoing negotiations with the International Monetary Fund.

More broadly, it sent a signal about how the credit rating agencies are now responding to governance failures, not just macroeconomic trends. For others watching closely, this was not just a market correction, it was a warning.

So why did it happen?

A report released by Moody’s in July 2025 on “large, unaccounted for debt increases” provides context. The report looked at how fiscal transparency failures – situations where governments provide incomplete, outdated or inaccurate information about their debts and budgets – undermine sovereign creditworthiness. This applies globally, not just to African countries.

Moody’s research centres on stock-flow adjustments. This is the gap between how much a government’s total debt rises in a year, and what that increase should be, based on the officially reported budget deficit. In other words, if a country runs a US$5 billion deficit, you would expect its debt to rise by about US$5 billion. When that debt increases by much more (or less), it suggests that something is missing or misreported in the official data.

The research demonstrates a clear correlation between large stock-flow adjustments and weaker governance scores.

Moody’s downgrade of Senegal’s sovereign rating, and its research report, underscore how transparency and governance issues are increasingly influencing sovereign credit assessments. Rating agencies have improved their methodologies to capture these risks. Governance factors now represent about 25% of sovereign ratings across major agency frameworks.

In addition, transparency issues are showing up as a stumbling block in debt restructuring negotiations. Zambia’s restructuring process took 3.5 years (2021-2024), partly due to transparency complications. Ethiopia’s ongoing restructuring (since 2021) demonstrates similar challenges. For its part, Ghana’s relatively faster process benefited from greater initial debt transparency.

As a researcher who has looked closely at the working of rating agencies, I suggest that Moody’s comprehensive analysis provides governments with a diagnostic tool as well as an early warning system for potential transparency issues.

The message for sovereign debt managers is clear: in an era of enhanced transparency requirements and sophisticated rating methodologies, the quality of fiscal data has become inseparable from creditworthiness.

Early warning signs

Moody’s research found that large and persistent stock-flow adjustments often signal weak fiscal transparency. And that, over time, they reflect incomplete reporting and weak expenditure controls.

Critically, Moody’s noted that

frontier markets in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have experienced the biggest stock-flow adjustments over the past decade.

There are many technical drivers behind stock-flow adjustments. Many are often legitimate. These can include debt management operations, asset acquisitions, arrears clearance and statistical revisions.

But Moody’s research pointed out that these technical reasons accounted for only half of the stock-flow adjustments. The other half remained unexplained – an indicator Moody’s treats as a serious red flag for fiscal credibility.

Senegal’s transparency failures

Senegal’s situation exemplifies how transparency gaps can rapidly destabilise sovereign credit profiles.

Following the March 2024 election audit findings by Senegal’s Inspectorate of Public Finances, its Court of Auditors report revealed “substantially weaker fiscal metrics” with “central government debt at close to 100% of GDP in 2023, around 25 percentage points higher than previously published”.

The scale of the revisions was unprecedented: debt-to-GDP ratios jumped from a reported 74.4% to 99.7% for end-2023. The fiscal deficit was revised upward from 4.9% to 12.3% of GDP.

Moody’s assessment was unambiguous:

The scale and nature of the discrepancies portray a much more limited fiscal space and higher funding needs than previously thought, while also indicating material past governance deficiencies.

The rating impact was swift and severe. Moody’s downgraded Senegal’s rating to B3 from B1 in February 2025, changing the outlook to negative, following an earlier downgrade from Ba3 in October 2024.

Senegal’s debt metrics reflect the severity of the fiscal challenge. The International Monetary Fund estimates Senegal’s debt reached 105.7% of GDP by end-2024, with gross financing requirements – the total amount the government needs to repay and borrow again to keep functioning – projected at around 20% of GDP in 2025 by the Senegalese budget.

The International Monetary Fund suspended its US$1.8 billion Extended Credit Facility in June 2024 following the misreporting discovery. However, the fund, in a note on negotiations during an August 2025 staff visit that was focused on working with Senegal in light of the post-election audits, wrote:

The IMF staff team commended the Senegalese authorities on their commitment to fiscal transparency and accountability, following their disclosure of the large misreporting that occurred over the past few years.

Troubling patterns

Moody’s emphasises that stock-flow adjustments occur across all regions and income levels. But the persistence and magnitude differ significantly by region. Recent African cases demonstrate particularly troubling patterns.

Some examples include:

Mozambique’s 2016 revelation of undisclosed debt amounting to 10% of GDP through state-owned enterprises. This led to sovereign default.
Zambia’s complex debt structure which contributed to its 2020 default. Borrowing by a state-owned enterprise wasn’t fully consolidated in the government’s statistics.
The Republic of Congo’s 2017 discovery of substantial oil-backed debt structured through offshore entities.
Gabon’s post-2023 transition disclosing debt burdens approximately 14 percentage points higher than Moody’s previous projections.

Why this matters

The economic logic of the correlation between large stock-flow adjustments and weaker governance scores is straightforward. Persistent positive stock-flow adjustments indicate that fiscal deficits may not accurately represent government financing needs. As Moody’s explains:

when stock-flow adjustments are positive, a higher primary balance is required to stabilise debt over the long term.

This creates both fiscal and credibility challenges that rating agencies must incorporate into their assessments.

For countries with histories of significant adjustments, Moody’s notes it may

make a more negative assessment of fiscal policy effectiveness.

Transparency matters too because a lack of it can complicate debt restructuring efforts. An example is negotiations under the G20 Common Framework, which aims to coordinate debt relief among official and private creditors.

The process depends on clear and comprehensive debt data to determine how much relief is needed, and who should provide it. When key debts are hidden, disputed, or poorly recorded, the entire negotiation slows down, or stalls entirely.

The way forward

The convergence of rating methodology enhancements and transparency requirements creates both challenges and opportunities for sovereign borrowers.

Improving fiscal data systems is no longer merely a technical accounting exercise. It’s a strategy for maintaining market access and creditworthiness.

The rating agency response suggests this trend will intensify.

For emerging and frontier market sovereigns, there are clear incentives for transparency improvements. Research shows governance improvements lead to decreased “spreads” in the market, while poor governance adds 50-200 basis points to sovereign spreads.

In other words, for sovereign borrowers, it pays to demonstrate better governance; investors clearly respond positively to the prospect of investing in borrowers who have clearly defined and transparent governance structures.

From warning to opportunity

Senegal’s case illustrates how transparency failures can trigger rapid and severe credit deterioration. But it also demonstrates the rating agencies’ increasing sophistication in detecting and penalising such weaknesses.

Sovereign borrowers shouldn’t view enhanced transparency requirements as burdensome oversight. They are opportunities to reduce borrowing costs.

Daniel Cash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Senegal’s rating downgrade: credit agencies are punishing countries that don’t check their numbers – https://theconversation.com/senegals-rating-downgrade-credit-agencies-are-punishing-countries-that-dont-check-their-numbers-261583

August 28, 2025

How does your body make poop?

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Brian Robert Boulay, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Illinois Chicago

Your small intestine is lined with tiny protrusions called villi that play a big role in digestion. Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

How does your body make poop? Owen, 4, Wakefield, Massachusetts

Much of the food you eat is absorbed by your digestive system, which includes your stomach and your intestines.

But some of what you eat makes it all the way through those twists and turns and comes out the other end as poop. How does that happen?

Imagine you start your day by eating a bowl of crunchy cereal with milk. The process of digestion begins as you start to chew.

Your teeth grind up the cereal into smaller particles, making it easier to swallow and digest. Your saliva contains an enzyme, a kind of chemical, called amylase that starts breaking down the cereal on a molecular level.

I’m a doctor who regularly treats children and adults with digestive problems. Some of my patients have problems absorbing nutrients from their food and others poop too often or not often enough. When they describe their symptoms, I consider the process of how our bodies make poop and which steps can go wrong.

Your stomach is full of enzymes and acid

Everything you eat contains three types of molecules that provide your body with the energy you need to live: carbohydrates, fats and proteins.

Amylase, an enzyme in saliva, begins breaking down the starches, a kind of carbohydrate, while the cereal is still in your mouth.

After you swallow, the milky cereal travels down your esophagus, a tube that carries swallowed food from your mouth to your stomach. That’s where digestion really gets going.

Your stomach contains hydrochloric acid, which breaks the food down into much smaller pieces. Over several hours, that acid and additional enzymes continue to pulverize the carbohydrates and protein from your bowl of cereal.

Diagram of the human gastrointestinal tract — What you ingest travels a long way before what’s left makes an exit.
Veronika Zakharova/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

Your long and winding small intestine

Two or three hours later, your breakfast will leave your stomach and enter the small intestine, which is a long and coiled tube that is contained in your abdomen behind your belly button. By that point, the digestive process will have turned those big chunks of cereal into tiny particles that are small enough for your body to absorb.

By coursing through your bloodstream, these teeny particles will deliver energy and the building blocks for growth to the cells all over your body.

The small intestine is perfectly suited to perform the job of absorbing nutrients partly because it’s gigantic. Regardless of your height, it can be over 20 feet (6 meters) long, and its surface is covered with villi, tiny protrusions with a texture that resembles a shag carpet.

Those millions of villi create a huge amount of surface area, which is ideal for absorbing the nutrients in what you’ve eaten once it has been digested. The small intestine also contains many types of bacteria, which assist in breaking down the food particles.

The small intestine also produces more enzymes to help break down the carbohydrates in breads and pasta into simple sugars that are easily absorbed. As food enters into the small intestine, other organs also contribute their digestive juices to the mix.

The liver and gallbladder mix a greenish liquid called bile into the food.

Bile helps break down fats contained in food. Pancreatic enzymes help break down the carbohydrates, fats, proteins and the other nutrients in the food you eat.

Pink picture of the intestines. — Your small intestine and large intestine both have important jobs.
Dmytro Lukyanets/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Your slow and short colon

The journey through your small intestine takes between two and six hours to complete. By this point, your bowl of cereal is unrecognizable. It has turned into chyme, a greenish liquid. Chyme gets its color from the bile made in the liver.

As the chyme reaches the end of the small intestine, it enters into your large intestine, also known as the colon. The large intestine gets its name due to being wider than the small intestine, even though it is much shorter.

The colon is about 5 feet (1.5 meters) long. Unlike the villi-lined small intestine, it doesn’t absorb any nutrients. Instead it does another important job: It absorbs water from the slimy green chyme your digestive system made from your breakfast. The small intestine also absorbs water into the bloodstream, where it is delivered to your kidneys to make urine.

So the intestines also play a small part in making your pee, as well as your poop.

This process is much slower than those earlier steps. It can take a whole day, and up to three days, to complete. By the time the chyme reaches the end of the colon, it has solidified and probably turned from green to brown.

The brown color of poop comes from the bile that is added by the liver to your bowl of cereal as it makes its way through the small intestine. The bile is changed by bacteria from green to brown. Without bile your poop would be a pale silver or clay color.

Lots of bacteria

What’s in your poop?

When it leaves your body, poop contains some leftover water, as well as undigested food such as plant fiber, as well as some dead intestinal cells. And, it may surprise you to learn, almost half of it, measured by weight, consists of bacteria.

Your intestines contain trillions of these bacteria, which help you digest what you eat. Unlike some other kinds of bacteria, they do not make you sick. The ones that come out as part of your poop give it that stinky smell.

Each part of your digestive system, from your mouth to your colon, plays an important role in extracting from what you eat the energy and water that your body needs. They all work together to help you absorb most of that energy and water, while eliminating what you do not need.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Brian Robert Boulay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How does your body make poop? – https://theconversation.com/how-does-your-body-make-poop-261911

August 28, 2025

Israel’s ‘double-tap’ hospital strike probably breached rules of war

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sam Phelps, Commissioning Editor, International Affairs, The Conversation

This article was first published in The Conversation UK’s World Affairs Briefing email newsletter. Sign up to receive weekly analysis of the latest developments in international relations, direct to your inbox.

A video broadcast earlier this week captured the horrifying moment rescuers and journalists were killed in a “double-tap” strike on the Nasser hospital in southern Gaza. They had rushed to the scene of an initial Israeli attack, only for the same location to be bombed minutes later. Five journalists and several medical staff were killed by the second strike.

The attack prompted a wave of international condemnation. UK foreign secretary David Lammy wrote on social media: “Horrified by Israel’s attack on Nasser hospital. Civilians, healthcare workers and journalists must be protected. We need an immediate ceasefire”.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, initially called the strikes a “tragic mishap”. He added: “Israel values the work of journalists, medical staff and all civilians”. But the strikes have now been characterised by Israel as a targeted attack on Hamas fighters.

An initial inquiry by Israel’s military says “it appears” its troops “identified a camera that was positioned by Hamas in the area of the Nasser hospital that was being used to observe the activity of IDF troops” in order to direct attacks against them.

Whether or not charges relating to the attacks are ever brought remains to be seen. But James Sweeney of Lancaster University’s School of Law, believes there should be no doubt that the double tap tactic falls into the category of acts of war that are prohibited by the law of armed conflict.

Sweeney examines how international law operates in situations like this, identifying four fundamental rules on methods that govern the conduct of hostilities: humanity, necessity, distinction and proportionality.

He says the Israeli strikes almost certainly breached the rule on distinction, which requires that only lawful objectives should be targeted for attack. He explains that there are very limited circumstances in which a hospital or its medical staff could ever be a lawful target. The same goes for journalists. Both are protected under the Geneva Conventions.

Sweeney also sees Israel’s attack as violating the rule on proportionality, which says expected “collateral damage” should not be excessive to the expected military advantage of the attack. Even if the claim that the hospital was being used by Hamas to stage attacks on Israeli forces stands up, thus possibly making it a lawful target, the collateral damage was likely going to be vast.

Excessive collateral damage has been a grim theme of the war. Israeli government officials consistently say their military works hard to keep civilian harm to a minimum, for example by making phone calls and sending text messages to those residing in buildings designated for attack.

However, Israel’s own numbers cast doubt on this claim. Figures from a classified Israeli military intelligence database, reported by the Guardian last week, indicate that 83% of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been civilians. This is a rate of civilian killing far higher than other modern wars, says Neta Crawford of the University of Oxford.

Crawford, an expert on international relations, reports that western militaries began to take steps to minimise inadvertent harm to civilians after the Vietnam war in 1975. These practices, which include making collateral damage estimates prior to carrying out a strike, have not always been adhered to.

But when they have been followed, the rate of civilian killing has been reduced. In American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Crawford reports, civilian casualty rates were 68% and 26% respectively – far lower than in Gaza.

“Given the kind of war Israel is fighting – using large, indiscriminate weapons to destroy buildings and failing to distinguish between combatant and noncombatant – it has unsurprisingly produced high civilian casualty rates,” she says.

Peacekeeping in Lebanon

The UN security council, meanwhile, is voting today on whether to extend a long-running peacekeeping mission in Lebanon for one final time. Vanessa Newby and Chiara Ruffa of Monash University and Sciences Po respectively reported earlier this week that the mission, which has patrolled Lebanon’s southern border with Israel since 1978, is at risk of being discontinued.

The Trump administration wants to reduce US financial commitments to UN peacekeeping. It argues that expensive and longstanding missions should be downsized to cut costs. Israel has, at the same time, insisted that the mission has been ineffective in addressing the existential threat posed by Hezbollah.

Newby and Ruffa are critical of this latter assessment. They write that the mission’s mandate has never been to disarm Hezbollah directly. Instead, it is tasked with creating and maintaining a space free of armed groups in southern Lebanon by supporting the Lebanese armed forces.

The council is reportedly expected to adopt a French draft resolution that sees the operation continue until the end of 2026. It will then begin a year-long “orderly and safe drawdown and withdrawal” – a compromise with the US.

This is a welcome outcome. Dismantling the peacekeeping mission would, in Newby and Ruffa’s view, create a dangerous security vacuum along the Israeli-Lebanese border.

Lebanon’s army remains weak, so a sudden withdrawal risks a surge in Hezbollah activity in the south. This would increase the prospect of another direct conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, they say, and another Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

‘Fortress belt’

Russia is continuing to pound Ukrainian towns and cities, most recently launching strikes on Kyiv that killed at least 17 people. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has accused Moscow of choosing “ballistics instead of the negotiating table”, while UK prime minister Keir Starmer says Russia’s continuing attacks are “sabotaging hopes of peace”.

Talks on ending the war have been taking place for several weeks, though there has been no breakthrough. Russian leader Vladimir Putin is demanding that Kyiv cede control of the entirety of its Donetsk oblast, a region in eastern Ukraine, to Russia.

The Trump administration, keen for the war to end, seems to back this idea. When asked a question recently about Russia keeping territory it has seized, vice-president J.D. Vance remarked that “every major conflict in human history” has ended “with some kind of negotiation. Chris Smith, a historian at Coventry University, interrogates the truth of this claim here.

Kyiv is unsurprisingly resistant to Putin’s demands. Rod Thornton and Marina Miron, security experts at King’s College London, say this would effectively be tantamount to an acceptance of overall defeat for Ukraine. Kyiv would be giving up its principal defensive barrier against further Russian encroachment into the rest of the country.

Thornton and Miron stress the strategic importance of Ukraine’s so-called “fortress belt” – the name given to the complex series of defensive lines established between towns and cities in the west of the Donetsk region. Russia has largely been unable to break through these lines, so has been prevented from surrounding any major urban area there.

Gaining control of western Donetsk is the key to winning the war, write Thornton and Miron. So Putin, unable to break through the fortress belt, is now trying to acquire it through a peace deal brokered with US assistance. This would settle the war, but in Russia’s favour.

Meanwhile a far larger belt of fortifications is taking shape across eastern Europe, as Russia’s neighbours race to protect themselves in light of the war in Ukraine. Natasha Lindstaedt, a specialist in authoritarian regimes at the University of Essex, believes the recent shift in US foreign policy and its telegraphed move away from being Europe’s security guarantor, has prompted countries including Finland, the Baltic states and Poland to take extra precautions.

As Lindstaedt explains, these border defences will be using the latest technology and early warning systems and artillery units. The project is going to require a high level of cooperation between these countries to ensure that there are no loopholes which could be exploited by a Russian offensive.

The hope is that all concerned have learned the lesson of the much-vaunted French Maginot Line, which Germany simply bypassed during the second world war.

Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

– ref. Israel’s ‘double-tap’ hospital strike probably breached rules of war – https://theconversation.com/israels-double-tap-hospital-strike-probably-breached-rules-of-war-264142

August 28, 2025

Like Reagan, Trump is slashing environment regulations, but his strategy may have a far deeper impact

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Barbara Kates-Garnick, Professor of Practice in Energy Policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

When the Trump administration announced it was moving to eliminate dozens of U.S. climate policies, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin said he was sending “a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”

That drive – to both repeal environmental regulations and cast doubt on science – reflects the Trump administration’s approach to environment policy.

Deregulation has long been a key theme in Republican environmental policy. The conflict between the obligation to protect public health and the desire to boost markets traces back to Ronald Reagan’s presidential administration. Reagan’s perspective that government is not a solution to problems, but is the problem instead, set the stage for Republican administrations that followed.

Reagan, standing in a reception line, shakes Trump's hand. Trump is wearing a tuxedo. Reagan a suit. — President Ronald Reagan shakes Donald Trump’s hand during a reception that Trump, then a real estate developer, attended at the White House in 1987.
White House Photographic Collection via Wikimedia Commons

Reagan argued that the growth of government spending and business regulation had stymied economic prosperity. Environmental regulations were a prime target.

Forty years later, America is seeing many of the same concepts in the Trump administration. However, its strategy could have a greater effect than Reagan ever envisioned.

Slashing budgets and staffing

There are many ways to kneecap government agencies: Instituting massive budget cuts, cutting staff with critical functions and appointing leadership whose goal is limiting the reach and effectiveness of the very agencies they direct are just a few.

In these efforts, Reagan and Trump had similar approaches to the EPA, although with different levels of intensity.

Trump’s EPA budget plan for 2026 includes a draconian 50% cut from the previous year and the lowest budget proposal, when adjusted for inflation, since Reagan. Staff cuts in just the first six months of the second Trump administration put the agency’s total employment at 12,448, down from 16,155 in January.

Reagan dissolved the EPA Office of Enforcement to limit “unnecessary regulation,” which resulted in a 80% decline in actions to enforce environmental regulations. Trump is also stopping enforcement actions, dismantling the EPA’s Science and Research Office and politicizing the agency’s science by putting political appointees in charge, moves that undermine EPA’s independence and expertise.

Both cut EPA’s budget, but that alone does not reduce an agency’s effectiveness.

Politicizing EPA leadership

When the EPA was founded in 1970 during the Nixon administration, it represented a bipartisan consensus: After decades of auto exhaust, polluted waterways and smog-filled air, environmental protection had become a national policy priority.

But industries that EPA regulated argued that the costs of implementing the agency’s mandates were too high. That created tension between economics and science and enforcement.

As part of his “government is not the solution” approach, Reagan issued an executive order shortly after taking office in 1981 requiring federal agencies to submit all proposed rules to the White House Office of Management and Budget before making them public. In Reagan’s eyes, this approach centralized power in the White House and was a way to eliminate burdensome regulations before the agencies announced them to the public.

He also appointed an EPA administrator who shared his anti-government perspective. Anne Gorsuch Burford was a lawyer and state legislator from Colorado, where she routinely voted against toxic waste cleanup and auto pollution controls.

A woman sits in a chair next to the president's desk. Reagan is smiling as he talks with her. — President Ronald Reagan meets with EPA Administrator Anne Gorsuch in the Oval Office in May 1982.
HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Once in Washington, she appointed several people to the EPA’s leadership team with direct ties to industries the EPA regulated. An example was Rita Lavelle, head of the EPA’s toxic waste programs, who was later convicted of perjury for lying to Congress about when she knew her former employer, a defense contractor, was disposing of toxic waste at a now notorious dump site.

These appointments were an example of regulatory capture by the industries EPA was in charge of overseeing. Anne Gorsuch Burford was held in contempt of Congress for not turning over records related to the Superfund cleanup of the same hazardous waste site, which led to her resignation. The Superfund program to clean up toxic waste dumps was new and one of EPA’s largest programs at the time.

The scandals, broken staff morale, stripped budgets and fights over policy discredited the agency.

Going after government scientists

Anne Gorsuch Burford’s deregulation efforts weren’t fully successful, in part because EPA staff experts rallied to preserve science and regulatory functions. They leaked materials about delays in the Superfund site cleanup to sympathetic congressional staff, who in turn found support from Republican and Democratic senators.

That history may have influenced the Trump administration’s strategy toward the federal bureaucracy’s staff experts, who Trump calls “the Deep State.”

The Department of Government Efficiency, an unofficial group Trump set up in early 2025 headed by Elon Musk, directed the firing of tens of thousands of government scientists and other staff with expertise that government agencies rely on. Thousands more have resigned amid intimidation tactics such as surveillance.

A group of people hold science reading 'EPA protects you, protect EPA' and 'Science saves' — EPA employees and supporters held a rally in Philadelphia on March 25, 2025, to call attention to the impact of the Trump administration’s job cuts.
AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Trump’s head of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, has been clear about targeting bureaucrats. He said in 2023: “We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma.”

There is a clear focus today on EPA programs that don’t align with the administration’s views. Programs related to environmental justice for low-income communities are in the line of fire. The appointment of people from the chemical, fossil fuel and corporate industries to high-level regulatory and legal positions raises questions about regulatory capture – whether their focus will be more on the health of the industries they oversee than on the health of the public.

An example is decision-making related to who bears the costs of cleaning up pollution from PFAS “forever chemicals” − persistent, harmful chemicals that are now found in drinking water and in people’s bloodstreams. Steven Cook, a Trump appointee who once represented chemical companies that are fighting the rule, has proposed shifting what are expected to be billions of dollars in costs from the companies to taxpayers, The New York Times reports. That would be a significant shift away from the 45-year Superfund mantra that “the polluter pays.” Such actions blur the lines between ethics, policymaking and consumer and company interests.

The first Trump administration had a focus on reforming permitting and bureaucracy. While appearing radical at the time, the revamping of scientific boards to include more industry representatives, the undoing of power plant rules and the lessening of enforcement hobbled but did not completely undo the agency.

The second Trump administration, in actively supporting fossil fuel “energy dominance,” is taking steps to not just eliminate regulations but to ensure future administrations can’t bring the regulations back, by using a complex set of legal arguments related to the regulation of greenhouse gases.

At the same time, the administration is trying to discredit scientific research to downplay the risks of a warming planet.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announces plans in March 2025 to reconsider dozens of regulations that affect the fossil fuel industry and human health.

The Reagan administration, while it also pushed for deregulation and expanded permitting of oil, gas and coal leases, embraced some elements of environmental protection. Reagan designated more than 10 million acres as protected wilderness and signed the Coastal Barriers Resources Act, which helped protect 3.5 million acres of shoreline from development. When Reagan signed the Montreal Protocol in 1988 to help protect the ozone layer, he cited scientific data showing the growing risks of ozone-depleting substances.

When Congress doesn’t push back

There is another critical difference between the first and second Trump administrations: The current Republican-controlled Congress is consenting to almost every request the president makes.

Congress has a constitutional responsibility to be a check on the executive branch, and a bipartisan Congress has long taken an active role in oversight and investigation involving environmental issues.

In 2025, however, Congress has approved most of Trump’s demands, including voting to repeal much of the Inflation Reduction Act, a package of pro-environment spending it had just passed two years earlier and that included many projects in Republican districts.

The administration’s effort to eliminate U.S. climate policies will take time and face lawsuits.

In an irony of history, Anne Gorsuch Burford’s son Neil Gorsuch now sits on the Supreme Court. His vote when those cases come before the court may be the ultimate Reagan legacy on the Trump EPA.

This article, originally published Aug. 26, 2025, has been updated with a recommendation within EPA to shift PFAS cleanup costs from companies to taxpayers.

Barbara Kates-Garnick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Like Reagan, Trump is slashing environment regulations, but his strategy may have a far deeper impact – https://theconversation.com/like-reagan-trump-is-slashing-environment-regulations-but-his-strategy-may-have-a-far-deeper-impact-262929

August 28, 2025

Netflix’s ‘Mo’ delivers humour, heartache as it explores Israel-Gaza war and Palestinian and Mexican migrant life in the U.S.

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Faiza Hirji, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts, McMaster University

I recently watched both seasons of the Netflix drama-comedy Mo (2022-25), expecting a good laugh, since the show is headlined and written by funny and smart comedian Mohammed Amer.

Mo does provoke a lot of laughter, but it also stirs deep emotions, including despair, loneliness and helplessness, as the episodes explore life in America for people on the margins.

Mo is a semi-autobiographical depiction of Amer’s life. He’s a Palestinian who grew up in Houston, Texas, immigrating to that city when he was nine years old by way of Kuwait.

In the series, Amer plays Mo Najjar as he navigates a complex balancing act between the different cultures that have shaped his life. Mo undergoes struggles to obtain asylum status in the United States as a “stateless person” with no passport.

Amer uses elements of a situation comedy to introduce increasingly troubling sociopolitical themes, leavening an existential darkness with the love and laughter of the main character’s friends and family.

The comedy-drama format allows Mo to address difficult and divisive issues, such as immigration in America and the Israel-Gaza war, in non-threatening ways.

Amer’s comedic writing also serves to humanize his characters. This is particularly important accomplishment in the case of Palestinians, both at home and in the diaspora — and more broadly for Muslims globally — given the long history of misrepresentation of Islam in western discourse.

Comedy tackles erasure of Palestine

In his writing on the first Gulf War, Canadian researcher Karim H. Karim explains how western war propaganda attempted to dehumanize their enemy. He cites comments from the U.S. army members during the Gulf War as examples. They described Iraqis as non-human and animals: “fish in a barrel,” “cockroaches” and part of a “turkey shoot,” alongside the use of longstanding stereotypes about Arabs and Muslims

Dehumanizing techniques can also be seen in today’s conflicts in the Middle East.

For example, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich delivered a speech in October 2024 in which he said: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. There is no Palestinian history. There is no Palestinian language.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also said: “We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”

Mo counters these types of messages repeatedly as features representations of strong women, respectful men and loving families, instead of the angry terrorists or oppressed women depicted in western imaginings.

Several researchers have previously documented such stereotypes, including Edward Said, Leila Ahmed, Yasmin Jiwani, Karim Karim and Ross Perigoe and Mahmoud Eid.

Comedy is non-threatening

Viewers get to know Mo’s family, the Najjars, and their quirks and idiosyncracies, as well as the complicated path they tread.

During the family’s asylum hearing, an opposing lawyer raises an objection to their claim, saying the U.S. does not recognize Palestine as a state. The statement is brief and the moment passes quickly, but the viewer is now aware of this kind of daily erasure of Palestinian people.

Over the course of the show, viewers see the many ways Mo protests the general erasure of Palestinian culture, including a recurring argument over the origin of hummus (made with chickpeas, garlic, tahini and olive oil).

Building that statement into a comedy is less likely to attract negative attention than a high-profile drama or documentary. For example, Hamdan Ballal, one of the directors of the Oscar-winning Israel-Palestine documentary, No Other Land, was injured in an attack by masked settlers and then arrested by the Israel Defence Forces in the West Bank. Israel’s culture minister said changes had been made to public funding rules to help prevent similar films from being made in future..

Comedy as simultaneous defusion and resistance is also practised by the Palestinian-Canadian comedian Eman el Husseini, whose stand-up routine touches on the idea that Arabs are perceived to be dangerous while painting a picture of her own family as affectionate, overbearing and harmless.

The strategic use of comedy to make characters relatable is a technique that has proven successful with racialized comedians tackling difficult issues, both for stand-ups like Russell Peters and situation comedy formats like Black-ish.

Crushing challenges

Humour may seem like an odd response to the characters’ crushing challenges. At one point, while in negotiation with a criminal who is threatening to amputate the foot of his friend, Mo suggests cutting off just a pinkie instead, hissing to his outraged friend, “Hey, you don’t wear pinkie rings, anyway!”

But in this series, humour becomes the coping mechanism for Mo‘s characters, however fraught or fragile the issue, from a lighthearted chuckle to the darkness of gallows humour.

At times, Mo’s mother, Yusra (Farah Bsaiso), seems utterly consumed by stories of dispossession taking place back in Palestine, while Mo becomes increasingly angry about examples of appropriation and erasure.

His sister, Nadia (Cherien Dabis), trying to forge a way forward, urges her mother to pull herself away from stories of tragedy back home and resist oppression finding moments of happiness. She insists:

“We’re more than our pain and suffering.”

Ultimately, it is Yusra who summarizes what it means to smile through one’s pain, telling Mo:

“The world will always try to tear us down. And when they do…we smile. Because we know who we are.”

Resilience

In Season 2, Mo, still undocumented in Texas, gets accidentally trapped in Mexico after unwittingly crossing the border. His Mexican fiancée leaves him in frustration and loneliness.

Throughout this season, Mo’s anger at the American immigration system grows as he repeatedly tries — and fails — to get home. He seems to be engaging in constant self-sabotage, in which he simply cannot accept the process that his lawyer and the bureaucracy have outlined for him.

Yet, as the depth of the dehumanization experienced by Mo and his family becomes more and more apparent, Mo’s simmering, ever-present anger starts to seem less dysfunctional. Instead, the world’s indifference becomes spotlighted.

During these episodes, Mo begins to learn how to live with — but never accept — injustice.

However, this is still a sitcom, and some things do work out for Mo. At the end of Season 2, Mo and his family get their U.S. passports and so can finally visit their family in Palestine.

As Mo is getting ready to return to Texas, after a joyful and also heartbreaking visit with his relatives, he is harassed by an Israeli border guard. At this moment, Mo realizes he must develop the same inner strength and resolve embodied by his mother, earned after years of having to bear such harassment.

Although Mo is consumed by anger and sadness at the unjust actions towards him by the guard, against all his instincts, he thanks the border guard, smiles and walks on.

Faiza Hirji receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

– ref. Netflix’s ‘Mo’ delivers humour, heartache as it explores Israel-Gaza war and Palestinian and Mexican migrant life in the U.S. – https://theconversation.com/netflixs-mo-delivers-humour-heartache-as-it-explores-israel-gaza-war-and-palestinian-and-mexican-migrant-life-in-the-u-s-249684

August 28, 2025

What’s in a name? How the sound of names can bias hiring decisions

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By David Sidhu, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Carleton University

Imagine you’re hiring someone for a job that requires a very kind, agreeable and co-operative person. You have two candidates and all you know about them are their names: Renee and Greta. Who do you think would be a better fit?

If you are like the people in our recent study on hiring judgments, you probably chose Renee. We found that smoother-sounding names like Renee were preferred to harsher-sounding names like Greta for certain kinds of jobs.

The idea that the sound of a word can make it a better fit for particular meanings or qualities is known as sound symbolism. And it suggests that even something as small as the phonemes in a name can carry surprising weight in how people are judged.

The power of sound symbolism

The best known example of sound symbolism is the bouba/kiki effect. Across languages and cultures, people tend to match the made-up word “bouba” with round shapes and “kiki” with spiky ones.

Why this happens is still debated. Various explanations exist, including the physical sensation of pronouncing the words or the way the sounds of the words imitate the features of round versus spiky objects.

Two shapes seen side-by-side: A spiky shape and a flower shape with rounded edges — In experiments, people tend to associate the word kiki with the shape on the left, and bouba with the one on the right.
(Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA

Several years ago, we tested whether the bouba/kiki effect extended beyond invented words to real first names. In one part of that study, we showed participants silhouettes that were either round or spiky and asked them to match them with names.

Not only do people associate names like Bob with round silhouettes and Kirk with spiky silhouettes, but people also associate these names with different personality traits.

Smoother-sounding names like Liam or Noelle were judged as more agreeable and emotional, while spikier-sounding names like Tate or Krista were judged as more extroverted.

Importantly, this didn’t mean that Liams actually were more agreeable than Tates. In fact, when our study looked at the personalities of more than 1,000 people, we didn’t find any sign these patterns existed in the real world. Nevertheless, people still make associations based on the sounds of names.

Names and hiring decisions

In our latest study, we were curious to see how these associations might affect judgments in a real-world context: hiring. Of course, employers usually have much more to go on than a name, but there are many instances in which candidates are screened based on only limited information.

There is also a great deal of evidence that socio-demographic cues in a name — such as race and age — can affect who gets a callback. The sound of a name itself could be another potential source of bias.

We designed job ads that looked for a candidate high in one of six personality factors: honesty-humility, emotionality, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness (how organized or hard-working someone is) and openness to experience. For example, one ad looking for an agreeable candidate read:

An organization is looking to hire a new employee. The ideal applicant for this job should be:

Co-operative

Peaceful

Not aggressive

A sample of adults recruited online were then given a pair of names and asked to decide who sounded like a better fit for the job. One name in the pair contained what are called “sonorant” consonants (l, m, n) that sound especially smooth and continuous.

The other contained what are called “voiceless stops” (p, t, k) that sound especially abrupt. For example, they might have to choose between Liam and Tate.

The people in our study made decisions for many different pairs of names, and the overall finding across three experiments was that smoother sounding names, like Liam and Noelle, were judged as better fits for jobs looking for someone high in honesty-humility, emotionality, agreeableness and openness.

When more information is available

We also tested what happens when additional information was introduced. For example, what if participants saw Liam in a picture or watched a video of him answering questions about himself?

We found that when people saw pictures of candidates (randomly paired with names), the influence of name sound decreased. When people saw a videotaped interview of the job candidates, the sound of a name no longer had an effect on their judgments of personality.

We also asked participants how well a given name fit the job candidate in the video. When people felt a name suited a candidate — regardless of sound — that candidate was judged more positively on almost every measure, including warmth and competence.

In other words, there seems to be a benefit of having a name that fits, even though it’s not yet known why some people’s names seem to suit them better than others.

Taken together, these results show the sound of a name might be one additional source of bias in hiring decisions. When people don’t have a lot of details about a candidate, it seems that there is much in a name.

David Sidhu receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

Penny Pexman receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

– ref. What’s in a name? How the sound of names can bias hiring decisions – https://theconversation.com/whats-in-a-name-how-the-sound-of-names-can-bias-hiring-decisions-263607

August 28, 2025

Universities could bolster democracy by fostering students’ AI literacy

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Larry Till, PhD student, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary

The fears are familiar: Artificial intelligence is going to eat our jobs, make our students weak and lazy and possibly destroy democracy for good measure.

As AI has become more accessible to the public, it’s become closely (and probably not unreasonably) associated with academic misconduct, especially plagiarism and other forms of cheating.

For some time now, research has been suggesting that the future of AI and post-secondary education would be deeply intertwined.

What if, though, teaching students to use AI properly — ethically, responsibly and critically — could help make them better, more engaged citizens?

Fuelling debate

Since its public release in late 2022, ChatGPT, one of the most commonly used generative AI (GenAI) models in the world, has sparked furious academic debate. But the either/or argument that it will kill us or make us stronger is a false dichotomy.

As a long-time post-secondary educator, public servant and current doctoral student examining education and civic literacy, I am interested in the potential for AI to help us build a healthier, more inclusive and more robust democracy by creating new ways to engage our critical thinking skills across disciplines.

I researched this article, in part, by using Scite.ai, a research tool to which I was introduced by Sarah Eaton, a member of my doctoral supervisory committee whose research focuses on academic ethics in higher education. Eaton has examined issues around student misconduct, and has also argued that the connection between civic and digital literacy, including the use of AI in post-secondary education, is strong and growing.

Universities and civic literacy

Civic literacy is about fostering students’ potential to become active, engaged students in the pursuit of peaceful social change.

Somewhere along the way, it seems, universities shied away from that part of their institutional role.

Through western modernity, universities came to occupy roles as endowers of knowledge while building on more ancient expectations that education carried social obligations, often construed as a form of “noblesse oblige.”

Decolonial, democratic and educational criticism rightly underscores the importance of recognizing varied forms of knowledge existing throughout society and in learners’ own lives, and how students and diverse disciplines collaborate to construct knowledge.

Through this lens, as some scholars have argued, universities have become spaces to foster forms of civic literacy.

Educating for democracy

The role of colleges and universities in fostering civic literacy, sometimes known as educating for democracy, feeds their contribution to fostering democratic societies. Universities frequently point to this role proudly, speaking of it in broad, glowing terms without offering a lot of specifics.

While universities and colleges often talk broadly about creating learning spaces conducive to democratic engagement and good citizenship, principles associated with democracy have tended to be concentrated in a relatively small number of academic disciplines, such as humanities, social and political sciences. The STEM disciplines don’t always give them the same attention.

The need for digital and AI literacy, across disciplines, raises rich possibilities around fostering the teaching and learning of democratic or civic dispositions. This refers to creating students who become voting citizens, who have the capacity to make informed political decisions about the leaders who represent them or to assess the validity of what those leaders present.

The path to using AI to foster civic literacy requires the reinforcement of critical thinking, which encourages learners to challenge assumptions and cultivate independent thought.

Becoming critical, informed citizens

Many of us are familiar with concerns that AI doesn’t probe deeply; it can’t assess credibility as a human might; it’s typically working from dated information, having been trained on older, static data sets; it demonstrates bias and discrimination; and sometimes, it can outright hallucinate, making up facts that have no basis in reality.

There’s a bit of a void at the moment in terms of institutional AI policies on the use or misuse of AI and how everyone understands them, which is understandable, given how new the technology is.

This is where the connection between AI and civic literacy is especially strong: the same critical thinking skills we teach our students in literature, science or any other discipline can be applied to when explaining AI policy or transparently examining AI outputs in classes related to curricula and assignments.

By teaching students to question outputs and assess their validity, accuracy and trustworthiness, we can help them enhance the very skills they’ll ultimately need to become active, informed citizens.

They might then stand a better chance of becoming more critical citizens, employing their skills to resolve disputes and assess everything from the news they consume to promises made by political leaders. It can also help develop the skills to combat political polarization and misinformation.

True digital literacy includes not only determining in what contexts it could be appropriate to use AI but also how to effectively use AI-powered tools.

Need for prudence

University educators have to be prudent in our approach, though. So-called “cognitive offloading” — trusting machines to do our reasoning, thinking and memory work for us — is a genuine risk.

This risk makes the argument for using AI to teach critical thinking even more compelling. Human analysis of the output and its credibility is essential.

In a presentation at the University of Calgary in March 2025, Eaton noted:

“If anything, problems facing students, educators and citizens of the world may be even more complex in the future than they are today … These next-generation citizens will be navigating and leading changes we have not yet even imagined.”

What I am seeing in my research is that a broadening of the discussion to look at AI’s potential to foster civic literacy — as Eaton suggests — may be crucial to the future of democracy.

Larry Till does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Universities could bolster democracy by fostering students’ AI literacy – https://theconversation.com/universities-could-bolster-democracy-by-fostering-students-ai-literacy-261905

August 28, 2025

The harms of low-blow political satire in a polarised climate

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Samuel Clark, PhD Candidate in Politics and International Relations, University of Reading

Who are you laughing at? Khosro/Shutterestock

In a world where politics can often feel demoralising, it’s no surprise that many people are finding comfort and hope in political satire.

Shows like Have I Got News For You and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver use wit and irony to make controversial, distant and uncomfortable issues more approachable while providing moral judgment on them. The idea is that when disheartening topics are dressed humorously – climate change, political corruption, structural injustice – we’re more inclined to pay attention. And, if all goes well, we might be able to poke fun at ourselves and our ignorance along the way.

Done well, satire can benefit democracy. It offers representation: the satirist articulates the grievances of people who might otherwise struggle to advance their views. It can be educational, bringing attention to important issues that are obscured in public discussions. It can hold power to account, pressuring elites to address harms they might be ignoring. And satire can promote social equality: it mocks the powerful, and in so doing asserts that they are not above others.

But in many democracies, and the US in particular, this model isn’t always being subscribed to. Much of the popular satire we see today prioritises affirming the prejudices of its partisan audience over pursuing the democratic benefits it has the potential to deliver.

My ongoing PhD research examines when satire is and isn’t democratically valuable in societies marked by deep divisions. And I’m concerned that some popular modern satire is taking a wrong turn.

Perhaps as a symptom of Donald Trump making satire of elites more and more difficult, some satirists are choosing to make fun of uninformed regular people rather than those in power, particularly when those people have different political views.

One example can be seen in The Daily Show’s recurring segment Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse. In the segment, leftwing satirist Klepper interviews attendees at Donald Trump rallies, steering them – through strategically phrased questions – into absurd or contradictory positions. The comedy is bolstered by manipulative editing and laugh tracks that paint Trump supporters as inherently foolish and unreasonable. The clips consistently attract millions of views online.

While the segment is humorous, the primary goal is not to foster public understanding or deliver a substantive critique. Rather, it pursues tribal reinforcement. The viewer is invited to laugh not at elite wrongdoing, but at the perceived ignorance of ordinary people.

This kind of satire fails to deliver, and in some cases undermines, the democratic benefits I’ve outlined above. In relation to the good of social equality, for instance, it vilifies, and so undermines the status of ordinary people. It also doesn’t hold power to account, nor does it educate people on issues of broader public concern.

Satirists wield considerable power. Studies show that many people, particularly those with low political interest, are turning to satirical television programmes as an alternative to traditional news broadcasters for information.

When satirists single out only the most extreme or ill-informed people and hold them up as representative of an entire political movement, they don’t educate or enlighten; they entrench caricature and propagandise. The audience walks away with their prejudices affirmed and their opponents dehumanised.

Punching sideways

Other satirical offerings – such as Inside Edition and Jimmy Kimmel Live, alongside a number of social media creators – are further examples of cheap shots aimed at political opponents. (Examples from the political right are harder to come by. Conservatives tend to dress their consumption of politics in outrage and anger rather than satire and irony.)

Across all these examples, an “interviewer” uses mock sincerity to lull people in and subsequently shame, demean and ridicule them – often without them knowing that they are indeed the subject of ridicule. These performances rarely illuminate complex issues or unsettle power structures. Instead, they deliver punchlines aimed squarely at their citizen adversaries. In so doing, they become partisan theatre, not satire.

While these performances may entertain, research suggests they also have lasting psychological consequences. Humorous stimuli have been shown to increase information recall. Some evidence also points to a “sleeper effect” whereby political messages delivered through comedy can become more persuasive over time, bypassing our critical defences. Humour can, however, make audiences treat messages as less important.

In my view, the danger lies in the broader narrative this kind of satire delivers about political opposition. Critiquing the hypocrisies in hardline Trump supporters’ views is one thing, but when we are encouraged to perceive an entire political group as blindly dogmatic, irrational and unreasonable, we cross a dangerous line. Instead of gaining a deeper understanding of political disagreement, viewers are left with the conviction that their political opponents are not just wrong, but unworthy of being debated. This isn’t civic engagement, it’s ideological arrogance. Democracy can’t function properly under these conditions.

This is not to argue that satire should be politically neutral. Far from it. Some of the greatest satirical work in history – from Jonathan Swift to Ian Hislop – has been fiercely ideological. But good satire challenges its audience as much as its targets. It holds a mirror up to society, forcing us to confront not just the flaws of our adversaries, but also our own ignorance.

With Saturday Night Live set to expand into the UK, British satirists would do well to take heed. There is a risk that the kind of polarising comedy taking root in the US will follow across the Atlantic. Satire is at its best when it exposes deception, discomforts the comfortable, and asks hard questions of those in power – even when they’re on our own side. It should show that no one side holds all the answers. That’s harder, riskier work. But it’s the kind of satire we need now more than ever.

Samuel Clark receives funding from the South East Network for Social Sciences.

– ref. The harms of low-blow political satire in a polarised climate – https://theconversation.com/the-harms-of-low-blow-political-satire-in-a-polarised-climate-255750

August 28, 2025

Housebuyers hate stamp duty. Why hasn’t it been reformed before now?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Cheshire, Professor Emeritus of Economic Geography, London School of Economics and Political Science

For years, academic economists have argued that council tax and stamp duty are deeply flawed. Politicians from all corners, as well as various thinktanks, also seem to agree. Back in 1976, the UK even had a royal commission recommending radical reform, but it was never implemented.

But now the UK government is said to be considering a change to stamp duty so that it is only paid on houses selling for more than £500,000. This could be big news, especially since it would be paid by sellers rather than buyers as at present. Due to higher house prices, it would hit people in London and the south-east the hardest.

Stamp duty is one of the UK’s oldest taxes, introduced in 1694, but its rules and rates have changed over time. Particularly since 2010, rates have increased and a range of complex exemptions (for first-time buyers, for example), “holidays” and higher rates for second homes have come and gone. Scotland and Wales now have their own systems.

Phasing these changes in and out has increased cyclical fluctuations in housing markets. For example, when a reduced stamp duty rate (introduced in 2022) was phased out three years later, house prices slumped.

But the main problem with stamp duty is that it is a tax on buying and selling houses – so on moving. It is a barrier to both downsizing for the old, and upsizing for the growing family. As such, it penalises moves to use the UK’s scarce housing stock more efficiently.

It may also act as a barrier to labour market adjustment (and so damage productivity growth) by impeding people’s ability to move for better jobs. A 2017 study concluded that a two percentage point stamp duty increase reduced mobility by 37%. This mobility reduction, however, seems mainly confined to short-distance moves.

Having to pay stamp duty makes it more difficult for people to find houses better suited to their tastes. The lower impact on long-distance moves (typically associated with labour market adjustment), however, does not provide much comfort.

The same 2017 study found that for every £100 in revenue the Treasury gained from a stamp duty increase, given the extra costs and problems encountered in finding a suitable house, households would need £84 to keep them at the same level of wellbeing.

Stamp duty is a progressive tax – the richer you are, the more you are likely to pay because it is related to the price of the house. But the relationship is complicated, with total exemption if the house price is under £125,000. This rises to 12% for all of the price above £1.5 million.

To this is added a further discount for first-time buyers and a premium for second home buyers. In fact, since the regional variation in house prices is much greater than the regional variation in incomes, stamp duty is super-progressive and penalises those living in London and the south-east.

cityscape of newcastle in england — Properties in Newcastle and the north-east of England sell for a fraction of the price of those in London and the surrounding areas.
jan kranendonk/Shutterstock

In September 2024, the median house price in London was, at £525,000, 3.3 times that in the cheapest region, the north-east. But Londoners’ median earnings were only 1.4 times those in the north-east.

Why does stamp duty still exist?

For governments, the attractive aspect of stamp duty is that it is cheap and easy to collect. And, like any property tax, it is difficult to avoid. It may also be the case that it is a politically easier tax to impose than, say, council tax. This is because it is seen to be avoidable or voluntary.

If you do not want to pay it, you can just not buy a house. After all, it is the buyer who is responsible for paying it. But of course, it may not really be as simple as that. The tax burden will in fact be split between buyers and sellers – and everyone has to to live somewhere, so rents will still reflect an element of stamp duty paid by landlords.

Reforming stamp duty surely should be high on the agenda of a good government with a long-term view. But the apparent focus on stamp duty seems to be more the result of the government’s revenue shortfall crisis and the Labour party’s commitment not to increase taxes on “working people”.

Crucially, there is an overwhelming case for a fully thought-through reform of stamp duty and council tax in combination. A strategic vision would add our system of local government finance to that agenda. Many think council tax is a far worse tax than stamp duty. It is the product of another crisis: the need to put something – anything – in place in a hurry after the collapse of the Thatcher government’s poll tax in the early 1990s.

It would be a tragedy if the UK were to get a rushed, short-term change to stamp duty in a bid to raise revenue in an emergency, rather than address the serious, long-term problems of how we tax property and fund local government. If stamp duty is changed, it must not endanger such a real, long-term and valuable reform.

Paul Cheshire is affiliated with the London School of Economics; Centre for Economic Performance; Labour Party member.

– ref. Housebuyers hate stamp duty. Why hasn’t it been reformed before now? – https://theconversation.com/housebuyers-hate-stamp-duty-why-hasnt-it-been-reformed-before-now-263747